Conservatives Should Applaud Megyn Kelly Move To NBC But Not For Reasons You Think

Megyn Kelly had the second most watched show on the Fox News channel. Only Bill O’Reilly in a much sweeter time slot drew more viewers than Kelly. She’s been a fixture at Fox News for nearly a decade, and now she’s moving on to NBC, and it is a move that conservatives should cheer.

Contrary to what some people think, the reason is not “good riddance” but “Congratulations!” because it is a welcome respite from major networks recycling liberals within the ranks. Make no mistake, the only people happy with this move are NBC executives and Donald Trump flunkies who believe kissing up to Trump 24/7 is the standard for good journalism.

The Hill published a piece yesterday entitled, ‘Conservative media figures celebrate Megyn Kelly’s departure from Fox.’ One look at the article, however, and it did nothing but elicit laughter. The “conservative media figures” named include people like Bill Mitchell, Wayne Dupree, Jack Posobiec, Jim Hoft and Mark Dice. Give me a break. They are hardly “conservative media figures.” Several are familiar members of the Twitterati; one is a blogger who publishes more garbage than the Weekly World News, and another is a YouTuber who goes out like late night talk shows do and interviews people on the street to collect stupid answers and believes Tomi Lahren should replace Kelly.

They can’t stop bowing before Trump to begin to understand this is a seismic shift in television journalism. Megyn Kelly will be in front of a much larger audience going forward. People can laugh at NBC but do you know how many viewers ‘NBC Nightly News’ averaged during the 2015-2016 season? Nearly 8.6 million a night, close to three times as high as Kelly’s best night on Fox News which was 2.8 million this past August.

Aside from Trumpers, other network journalists are paying attention to the hire of Kelly. It’s no secret, many journalists look at Fox News with a level of disdain due to their conservative bias (while ironically ignoring Fox News very existence is the result of liberal bias in journalism for 50 years), and now one of them has made a move to the big time. A lateral move from Fox News to CNN wouldn’t make anybody nervous, but this does.

Conservative journalists who make a move into mainstream outlets is a good thing. So the news of Megyn Kelly moving to NBC is a good thing. There needs to be more of this, and when it happens, people shouldn’t complain because a journalist is leaving the friendly confines of an outlet that mainly preaches to the choir.